At the opening of "The Cosmos in a Tea Bowl: Transmitting a Secret Art Across Generations of the Raku Family" at The National Museum of Modern Art, in Kyoto, the current head of the Raku family, Kichizaemon XV (b. 1949), explained that the event would be "an unprecedented and once-in-a-lifetime exhibition of such a grand scale" that it would include important works by Raku founder Chojiro (date of birth unknown-1589) and Honami Koetsu (1558-1637), the artist who inspired the founding of the Rimpa school — pieces that are rarely exhibited together in public.